Fire Emblem: Code of the Burger King is a greater celebration of the series than Fire Emblem Engage.
I know this sounds really conceited and runs the risk of "Nintendo hire this man" rhetoric but let me explain. Regardless of your opinions on a title as polarizing as Engage, the inherent idea of focusing on the main lords as a group of friends happily getting along fundamentally can not represent Fire Emblem the idea. Every Fire Emblem game has at least one massive thorn that hinders people from liking it, be that frictional game design decisions, sloppy writing, the multitude of reactionary and/or otherwise disgusting aspects throughout the series, or in most cases, all three combined. To put this into perspective, the most likely candidate for the most universally beloved game in the series among those who've played it is the one with infamously slow paced gameplay and also a playable minstrel stereotype. As such, there's this inherent air of cynicism to Fire Emblem that makes it, be it through older fans wishing for the series' death already or newer fans jokingly referring to their preferred games in the series as dating sims. I don't care for a lot of tonally similar game franchises (i.e. Persona, Xenoblade, Trails) yet I am an avid enjoyer of Fire Emblem for how weird and frictional it can be at points as well as how your enjoyment of it effectively turns you into the RPG fan equivalent of a heel wrestler. It is impossible for official attempt at a Fire Emblem celebration to capture what makes the series appealing to a significant portion of its playerbase, as doing so would require Nintendo and Intelligent Systems to reveal the man behind the curtain and shatter the facade behind their advertised image of the series.
Enter Code of the Burger King, a Fire Emblem rom hack with the core appeal of being a meme hack with surprising levels of mechanical depth and effort in other avenues. The opening chapters of this hack follow the typical Fire Emblem set up of a royal or otherwise important figure (the latter in this case) fleeing their homeland due to some unexpected danger but with the twist that the main character BK, the Tellius games' popular antagonist, did this because of an annoying customer at his shitty fast food job, creating a juxtaposition between the fantastical and the mundane or otherwise cynical. Similar juxtapositions exist all throughout Code of the Burger King: This game's Jagen (i.e. strong prepromote that joins early and will almost certainly be of great importance to your performance in the first few chapters) is Fiona, a notoriously scuffed gameplay unit due to a possible coding error. Duo Geno Escapo, a rom hack widely disliked by the community for its low effort edgelord humor is portrayed as a mythical evil/Brothers Grimm style legend passed down through generations coming true. And one of the most important moments in the development of RPG storytelling, Final Fantasy IV's Cecil Harvey turning from bad knight to good knight (good night for you) and accepting his role as a prophesized hero through an act of mercy, is distorted to be about fulfilling the destiny of a fast food chain with food that doesn't even taste good.
In particular, there's a running gag that the hack's enemies are appearing out of nowhere as if they only exist to be fodder for video game missions with no minds of their own. The cause of these occurrences is a version of corporate mascot, Touhou meme, and apartheid supporter Ronald McDonald with the personality, nihilistic outlook, and banger boss theme of Final Fantasy VI's Kefka Palazzo. Upon defeating him in the final map, our protagonist admits he has a point about life having no intrinsic meaning but instead sees that revelation as a jumping off point to find your own meaning, a parody of the tendency of plenty of RPGs to act like they're deeper than they actually are for skimming the Wikipedia page for existentialism with little to add beyond that that is then followed up by BK's partner in yaoi assuming he's intoxicated from volcano smoke.
However, in a way, this existentialist philosophy of ascribing your own meaning onto the meaningless is what is necessary to be a Fire Emblem fan. Code of the Burger King isn't just a tribute to vanilla Fire Emblem through its decision to feature elements from across the series but also a tribute to the value that various fans have managed to get out of the series. Members of the playable cast include Hugh, a personal favorite of the hack's creator, Matthis, the loser cavalier propelled to a beloved character in small circles because of one man's actions, and Rebecca and Priscilla, a pair of characters that have literally never interacted with each other once in the actual game they came from but have been turned into a niche lesbian pairing due to a rom hacker's attempt at an FE7 rebalance and subsequent Twitter gaslighting campaign. For any fault I can find with Code of the Burger King's gameplay (Chapter 13 plays like ass and also I really do not like the decision to have relatively large deployment limits in a way that can sometimes mess with the pacing of turns and discourages me from engaging with permadeath due to the game's smaller sized cast) and for any joke that doesn't land, Code of the Burger King exceeds not just as one of the best examples of the fast paced player phase focused gameplay that's become the bread and butter of FE hacks but also as a genuine celebration of everything to happen in the series' three decades of existence, be it good or bad.
Move over Final Fantasy IX, Persona 3, and Nier, this is what a real 40 hour RPG that tells you life is worth living at the end looks like.
Last Minute Disclaimers:
1. At the risk of coming off as too preachy for a review of a Fire Emblem rom hack, I support the BDS targeted boycott against Burger King, McDonalds, and other brands involved in reinforcing a disgusting apartheid regime and urge you all to do the same. I personally read the game's use of these two brands is very much a joke at their expense but it is very awkward to talk about a hack with "Burger King" in the name given current events so I feel the need to specify this.
2. I have regular contact with the hack's creator through various avenues (one of which being my own public Discord server before I deleted it due to a long story involving someone joining just to post an Andrew Tate cock gif) and have beaten his ass in multiple Pokémon draft league matches so feel free to accuse me of nepotism.
I know this sounds really conceited and runs the risk of "Nintendo hire this man" rhetoric but let me explain. Regardless of your opinions on a title as polarizing as Engage, the inherent idea of focusing on the main lords as a group of friends happily getting along fundamentally can not represent Fire Emblem the idea. Every Fire Emblem game has at least one massive thorn that hinders people from liking it, be that frictional game design decisions, sloppy writing, the multitude of reactionary and/or otherwise disgusting aspects throughout the series, or in most cases, all three combined. To put this into perspective, the most likely candidate for the most universally beloved game in the series among those who've played it is the one with infamously slow paced gameplay and also a playable minstrel stereotype. As such, there's this inherent air of cynicism to Fire Emblem that makes it, be it through older fans wishing for the series' death already or newer fans jokingly referring to their preferred games in the series as dating sims. I don't care for a lot of tonally similar game franchises (i.e. Persona, Xenoblade, Trails) yet I am an avid enjoyer of Fire Emblem for how weird and frictional it can be at points as well as how your enjoyment of it effectively turns you into the RPG fan equivalent of a heel wrestler. It is impossible for official attempt at a Fire Emblem celebration to capture what makes the series appealing to a significant portion of its playerbase, as doing so would require Nintendo and Intelligent Systems to reveal the man behind the curtain and shatter the facade behind their advertised image of the series.
Enter Code of the Burger King, a Fire Emblem rom hack with the core appeal of being a meme hack with surprising levels of mechanical depth and effort in other avenues. The opening chapters of this hack follow the typical Fire Emblem set up of a royal or otherwise important figure (the latter in this case) fleeing their homeland due to some unexpected danger but with the twist that the main character BK, the Tellius games' popular antagonist, did this because of an annoying customer at his shitty fast food job, creating a juxtaposition between the fantastical and the mundane or otherwise cynical. Similar juxtapositions exist all throughout Code of the Burger King: This game's Jagen (i.e. strong prepromote that joins early and will almost certainly be of great importance to your performance in the first few chapters) is Fiona, a notoriously scuffed gameplay unit due to a possible coding error. Duo Geno Escapo, a rom hack widely disliked by the community for its low effort edgelord humor is portrayed as a mythical evil/Brothers Grimm style legend passed down through generations coming true. And one of the most important moments in the development of RPG storytelling, Final Fantasy IV's Cecil Harvey turning from bad knight to good knight (good night for you) and accepting his role as a prophesized hero through an act of mercy, is distorted to be about fulfilling the destiny of a fast food chain with food that doesn't even taste good.
In particular, there's a running gag that the hack's enemies are appearing out of nowhere as if they only exist to be fodder for video game missions with no minds of their own. The cause of these occurrences is a version of corporate mascot, Touhou meme, and apartheid supporter Ronald McDonald with the personality, nihilistic outlook, and banger boss theme of Final Fantasy VI's Kefka Palazzo. Upon defeating him in the final map, our protagonist admits he has a point about life having no intrinsic meaning but instead sees that revelation as a jumping off point to find your own meaning, a parody of the tendency of plenty of RPGs to act like they're deeper than they actually are for skimming the Wikipedia page for existentialism with little to add beyond that that is then followed up by BK's partner in yaoi assuming he's intoxicated from volcano smoke.
However, in a way, this existentialist philosophy of ascribing your own meaning onto the meaningless is what is necessary to be a Fire Emblem fan. Code of the Burger King isn't just a tribute to vanilla Fire Emblem through its decision to feature elements from across the series but also a tribute to the value that various fans have managed to get out of the series. Members of the playable cast include Hugh, a personal favorite of the hack's creator, Matthis, the loser cavalier propelled to a beloved character in small circles because of one man's actions, and Rebecca and Priscilla, a pair of characters that have literally never interacted with each other once in the actual game they came from but have been turned into a niche lesbian pairing due to a rom hacker's attempt at an FE7 rebalance and subsequent Twitter gaslighting campaign. For any fault I can find with Code of the Burger King's gameplay (Chapter 13 plays like ass and also I really do not like the decision to have relatively large deployment limits in a way that can sometimes mess with the pacing of turns and discourages me from engaging with permadeath due to the game's smaller sized cast) and for any joke that doesn't land, Code of the Burger King exceeds not just as one of the best examples of the fast paced player phase focused gameplay that's become the bread and butter of FE hacks but also as a genuine celebration of everything to happen in the series' three decades of existence, be it good or bad.
Move over Final Fantasy IX, Persona 3, and Nier, this is what a real 40 hour RPG that tells you life is worth living at the end looks like.
Last Minute Disclaimers:
1. At the risk of coming off as too preachy for a review of a Fire Emblem rom hack, I support the BDS targeted boycott against Burger King, McDonalds, and other brands involved in reinforcing a disgusting apartheid regime and urge you all to do the same. I personally read the game's use of these two brands is very much a joke at their expense but it is very awkward to talk about a hack with "Burger King" in the name given current events so I feel the need to specify this.
2. I have regular contact with the hack's creator through various avenues (one of which being my own public Discord server before I deleted it due to a long story involving someone joining just to post an Andrew Tate cock gif) and have beaten his ass in multiple Pokémon draft league matches so feel free to accuse me of nepotism.